Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on UFC 172, Liddell vs. Jones, and more

Twitter Mailbag: Fowlkes on UFC 172, Liddell vs. Jones, and more

UFC 172 is almost upon us, friends. With that in mind, this week’s Twitter Mailbag starts with a discussion of Jon Jones, Glover Teixeira, and what the UFC would have us believe is that greatest event in the history of events.

After that, we’re kind of all over the map. But don’t worry, Chuck Liddell and Ronda Rousey both make their appearances, so there’s never a dull moment.

To ask a question of your own, simply tweet it to @BenFowlkesMMA. Easy, right? Now on to business.

Either UFC President Dana White has a really short memory, or else he thinks we do. Let’s be real here: UFC 172 isn’t even the most stacked event so far this year, and you’d only have to stretch back a few months to get to UFC 168 at the close of 2013. That overall lineup – two title fights, couple of heavyweight contenders, plus plenty of fun scraps on the preliminary card – blows this one away.

What we have here is a pretty good card that feels slightly more important than that solely because it includes UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones, who may very well be the best fighter in the world right now. It also helps that he’s coming off the toughest fight of his career. Plus there’s Phil Davis vs. Anthony Johnson, which is an interesting style matchup and a potential career crossroads for both guys.

So yeah, not bad, UFC 172. Obviously not the best we’ve ever seen though, so why would White claim otherwise on his video blog? I suppose it’s for the same reasons that the ads for this event hyped Glover Teixeira as the toughest opponent Jones has ever faced, promising – via a series of sound bites recycled from the Jones-Gustafsson fight, by the way, as if to remind us that that’s the pairing people really care about right now – that it will be the best light heavyweight title fight in UFC history.

The UFC seems to have decided that the way to sell its product is to scream “BEST EVER!!!” at every opportunity. The problem is that, for one, it’s lazy, and two, it doesn’t actually tell us anything. If you’re a fan who doesn’t know much about Teixiera (and you wouldn’t be alone there) or why he’s such a threat to Jones, what has the UFC done to sell you on it? Shouting about how great a fight will be doesn’t work because we know that the UFC doesn’t know if that’s true yet. Nobody does. Not for sure. Not until it happens. It’s making us a promise that it is not within the UFC’s power to fulfill, and in the process it’s missing the chance to explain why it thought this was a good idea to begin with. It’s salesmanship for dummies.

Why should I buy this car?

Because it’s the best car in the history of cars!

Really? Because, I don’t know, the gas mileage…

Best car ever! Any real driver would buy this car!!!!

Yeah, sorry. That doesn’t work on anyone who wasn’t already planning on buying it. If anything, it invites even the people who were planning on buying it to re-evaluate what they’ll be getting for their money. If you sell me a burger by telling me that it’s a really good burger, hey, fine. But if you try to tell me that it’s steak, that’s when I start to suspect that words just don’t mean anything to you, so why should I listen?

@benfowlkesMMA Is fighting Hendo a step up or down for Cormier? What if he loses?

When you consider that Daniel Cormier’s previous fight was against a coffee barista with a 4-0 record and zero UFC experience, Dan Henderson is definitely a step up. Is he a step up from Rashad Evans, whom Cormier was originally supposed to face in his light heavyweight debut? Well, no. How about from Frank Mir and Roy Nelson, whom Cormier beat at heavyweight after transitioning to the UFC from Strikeforce? Eh, more or less.

The way Hendo is these days, you can’t call any fight with him a gimme, though you also can’t say that Cormier’s stock wouldn’t drop significantly with a loss. He’s got to win this, and he probably will. The real question is, if he does win it, does anyone believe he’ll get to sit around and wait for his title shot? Alexander Gustafsson has dibs on the winner of Jones-Teixeira. That could mean a long wait as the champ fights and heals, then fights and heals again. Let’s call Cormier-Henderson what it really is: a fight to stay in the hunt for a title shot. Eventually.

@benfowlkesMMA Hopefully not to late, but what's your view on the usa today/mmajunkie ranking. Seriously everyweek people complain about it

They’re rankings. That’s what they’re for, so people can complain about and argue over them. Show me the rankings that are universally agreed upon by fight fans everywhere, and I’ll … no, I probably still won’t care. Rankings are a highly speculative, deeply imperfect science. In other words…

@benfowlkesMMA Davis is now making a sad attempt to trash talk to fight Jones. Is this the new UFC? Must talk crap for a title shot?

You can’t say we didn’t ask for this, in some weird way. We’ve been rewarding it an awful lot lately, as has the UFC itself, so how can we blame Phil Davis if the message he got was, talk more trash? Again, it’s working. We’re talking about him now. He’s on the radar for this weekend’s event. We all want to see if he’ll be able to back up those words, even if he’s not fighting the guy he said them about.

And that’s the good news, that he still has to get in the cage on Saturday night and perform, or else all that talking just lands him in the cautionary tale category. He asked for the spotlight. Now we’ll get to see what he does with it.

@benfowlkesMMA The Bellator PPV price tag looks to be around $45 for HD. Do you think that's a fair price? What would you price it at? #tmb

That sounds about right. A pay-per-view that’s $45 for HD is usually about $35 for regular D, and I think Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler have earned that much from us. You throw in Quinton Jackson and Muhammad Lawal in a weird, maybe somewhat forced grudge match, and sure, I’ll give you 35 bucks for that. The key is, can Bellator give me something for my money that will convince me to pony up again when the next PPV rolls around? Because Chandler and Alvarez, they can only fight each other so many times.

@benfowlkesMMA Any news on when Fight Pass will hit Apple TV, PSN, and/or other TV services? I refuse to watch on my 'puter. #TMB

According to one UFC official who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, the organization expects to have UFC Fight Pass available on Apple TV some time this summer. As a fellow Apple TV user who, a) doesn’t know how to hook his computer up to his TV, and, b) doesn’t want to spend any more time in front of the laptop than he already does, I welcome this development. Until then, I’ll just be over here watching old episodes of “Deadwood” on HBO Go. You hoopleheads are welcome to join me.

@benfowlkesMMA How can DW be so upset about "The Brawl" on TUF Brazil and in interviews, yet they use the incident to sell the show? #TMB

That is a little incongruous, isn’t it? It’s kind of like how fighting in the house will supposedly get you kicked off “The Ultimate Fighter,” and yet ads for “TUF” frequently show dudes fighting in the house.

But according to White, Wanderlei Silva injured both his back and his hand during that brief bit of reality TV violence, and that forced a delay in the actual fight between Silva and Chael Sonnen. I could see how that might make the UFC president mad. I could also see how it should make us all a little concerned about how Silva will fare in a fight where he won’t have his buddies around to pull Sonnen off of him. Just saying, a guy double-legs you that easily while he’s wearing flip-flops and jeans? That’s not a great sign, Wandy.

Agree, but I don’t see it happening. For one, Gina Carano is probably going to require a sizable paycheck to get back into the face-punching business, which means the UFC would probably prefer to have her on pay-per-view, where there’s at least a chance of recouping that cash. Perhaps more importantly, putting her up against Miesha Tate after nearly five years away from the sport sounds like a great way to get Carano beat.

Why do you think the UFC is trying to make this preemptive case for why she deserves an immediate title shot, while the woman who beat her doesn’t even deserve a roster spot? It’s because the UFC has little to no faith in her as a fighter right now, only as a draw. The fact that Tate couldn’t accept the hypothetical matchup fast enough when it was suggested at the last post-fight press conference, that only tells you that she concurs.

Q for @benfowlkesMMA. given Liddell's recent comments, does that make him 30-yr-old former varsity guy still attending high school parties?

It is a little sad, but also predictable. It’s got to be tough for a guy like Liddell, who was the most dominant light heavyweight champ in UFC history until Jones came along. Now it’s looking like “Bones” will eclipse Liddell in every category you can think of (except perhaps popularity with fans), so how is he not supposed to feel like yesterday’s news? Then he gets in front of a microphone on fight week and suddenly everyone’s asking how he’d do against Jones in his prime. What do we expect him to say? Of course he thinks he’d win. In his mind he’s still the same guy who knocked out Randy Couture and Tito Ortiz (both of whom Jones would slaughter, even in their primes).

The trouble is, once Liddell opens his mouth and starts expressing his totally unbiased view that he’d “walk through” Jones’ punches and knock him out, it pretty much begs us to respond, Dude, no you wouldn’t. We probably thought that before he started talking, or at least we would have if we hadn’t been so busy not even thinking about it. All Liddell’s done now is forced us to consider it, which maybe wasn’t such a great idea.

Double standard for rousey in her comments towards Cyborg? Mitrione got an earful from dana and nothing to rousey? #tmb @benfowlkesMMA

It’s not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. Matt Mitrione called transgender fighter Fallon Fox a “lying, sick, sociopathic, disgusting freak,” all because he was “appalled” by the idea of a transgender woman fighting other women. Ronda Rousey, on the other hand, claimed that Cristiane Justino has taken so many performance-enhancing drugs that she’s no longer hormonally female, but is instead “an it.”

First of all, just a general heads up, don’t call anyone an “it.” They’re a person, regardless of what you think of them. That said, it’s still not as bad as Mitrione’s lengthy tirade against Fox. While Rousey was attacking Justino for what she’s done, Mitrione was attacking Fox for who she is. He was, in that sense, attacking an entire group of people, dehumanizing them because he doesn’t personally understand their motivations. That’s significantly different from criticizing one person, however harshly, for using performance-enhancing drugs to knowingly cheat.

To me, the more interesting part of Rousey’s rant is her stated belief that there should be a zero tolerance policy with regards to PEDs in MMA.

“I really think with Cyborg taking all of those steroids and hormones and then going into the cage, it’s like going in with a weapon,” Rousey told Kevin Iole of Yahoo! Sports. “It’s certainly very negligent, but it’s also criminal. I believe, it really is. Promoting her would be promoting that act and I think it would be wrong in every way. I think it should be like the Olympics. If you [expletive] up once, you’re not going to the [expletive] Olympics. There should be a zero tolerance policy where if you’re caught doing anything, you should be done [expletive] forever.”

Cool. Guess that means we should go through this list and blackball every active fighter on it. If it’s a good enough reason to keep “Cyborg” out of the UFC entirely, where does that leave Vitor Belfort?

Ben Fowlkes is MMAjunkie and USA TODAY’s MMA columnist. Follow him on Twitter at @BenFowlkesMMA. Twitter Mailbag appears every Thursday on MMAjunkie.

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